Booking Across the USA with George Ella Lyon

For Booking Across the USA this year, bloggers are sharing a children's author from their chosen state and an activity to go along with it. For Kentucky, I chose George Ella Lyon.

George Ella Lyon grew up in the mountains of Kentucky. She writes for children and adults. She has a great website you can visit to learn more about her and her works.

*This post contains affiliate links


For our activity, we chose All the Water in the World by George Ella Lyon. This book is a great introduction to the water cycle for young elementary students.

After reading the book, it was time to talk about water in our lives. What did we use water for? We brainstormed and made a list of all the ways we use water each day - from brushing our teeth and boiling macaroni to watering our plants and making sure our pet rat has enough to drink.

Here are some questions to ask your kids about their water use:

What do you use water for? Make a list on the board.
Where does your water come from? Explain the different ways people get water around the world.
Does your water cost money? Talk about how water is treated and delivered to our homes.
What happens if it doesn't rain where you live? Talk about droughts and desserts.
What happens if your water is dirty? Talk about pollution and keeping our water clean.

After discussing how important water is in our lives, we did some experiments to further explore the water cycle.

We boiled water and watched the steam rise up into the air. We talked about the water vapor in the air around us and what humidity means.

Then we put a glass of ice water on the table and observed how beads of water were collecting on the outside of the glass. We talked about condensation and rain.

We also watched a Magic School Bus video about the water cycle to further understand the things we had observed. They also have a great Magic School Bus book for kids who want to read more.

Then we played with water!

We painted with watercolors. The boys loved watching how the water moved the colors around and mixed them up.

We explored sink and float. The boys gathered items from around the house. Before putting an object in the water they would guess if it would sink or float. We made piles for both groups.

We talked about water displacement by dropping glass marbles in a cup and seeing the water rise.

And we made boats out of air dry clay to see if they would float. We talked about how boats can float because the water the boat pushes away weighs more than the boat. It took a couple tries to get the right shape boat so it would float.

We even got out our ice shaver and had a shaved ice treat.

Other things we could have done but didn't:

- drop jelly beans (and/or other food) in water and watch them dissolve
- explore how to make ice melt more quickly by using salt, a hair dryer, their hands, or chopping it into smaller bits
- "paint" outside on the ground with water and watch the water evaporate!

Hooray for water!!

There are some other great books by this author too. A couple more favorites are The Pirate of Kindergarten and Trucks Roll!

Be sure to check out the rest of the posts about authors from each state over at Growing Book by Book! 

Elementary Easter Egg Writing Activity

This game is perfect for motivating reluctant writers and encouraging creativity!

Christopher hates writing. His fine motor skills are not great, spelling does not come naturally to him, and rules for capitalizing and punctuating keep slipping his mind. So whenever it's time for writing there are lots of tears.

Except when we play this simple game.

To play, you will need some easter eggs which have been prepared with numbers inside them. You will also need paper and a couple of pencils. Players take turns picking eggs then adding that many words to the collaborative story.

I went first. I drew the number 8. I wrote "Once upon a time, in a dark forest, ". Now it was Christopher's turn. He opened up the number 4. He added the words "a dragon slept in". (I knew it would be a dragon. He always writes about dragons.) I opened up an egg and found the number 8. (How come I keep getting big numbers?) I wrote "a pile of dirty laundry. Suddenly a loud "

"Mom!" he yelled. "That was supposed to be a cave! Not a pile of laundry!"

And that's one of the reasons this game is so fun for him. He loves when I add silly things or when he has the chance to add silly things.

While we are writing, I am helping him remember when to capitalize, where to add punctuation, and how to spell. It is great practice for him, but he doesn't see it as writing practice. He sees it as playing a fun game with his mom, making this the perfect way for him to learn.

Tips for using this game with your children or in your classroom:

1. Play for a set number of turns or a set number of minutes so there's a clear stopping point. You can always come back and finish the story the next day.

2. Use mostly small numbers for beginning writers so they don't get overwhelmed trying to think of 12 words to write. Bigger numbers work well for older kids.

3. Play with more than 2 people, making the story even more fun. Use smaller numbers so everyone gets plenty of turns to add to the story.

4. Use different colored pencils for each person so it's easy to see at a glance who added what parts of the story.

5. If you don't have plastic Easter eggs lying around, instead roll dice (affiliate link) to determine the number of words written.

6. Have the children draw pictures of their favorite part when done writing to further develop fine motor skills.


I hope you have fun writing your own silly stories!!

Mummy Math

This Halloween math game is a simple and fun way to practice math facts with children in the early elementary grades.

I have a confession - I've been a lazy homeschooler lately. It's just been me and Christopher and Nathan at home. Christopher's in 2nd grade. I've already done 2nd grade twice. I'm just cruising through things. But then the other day Christopher saw a picture of some of the fun school activities I had done with Maren and Joshua when they were his age and he figured that he was missing out on something. He asked when we were going to do something fun for school and made me feel a bit guilty. Sigh. Fine.

This game I call "Mummy Math" because I like the alliteration, but you could adapt it for reading too.

I cut out a mummy shape and then wrapped it in it's mummy clothes. Christopher's been working on his multiplication up through x5s, so I wrote numbers 2-5 on each piece of the mummy's wrapping strips on the left side, and on the right side I wrote the numbers 2-10.

To play the game, Christopher would pull back one flap of the mummy wrap on the left side, and then one on the right side, and multiply the two numbers together. If he got it right, he went again. His goal was to get the whole mummy unwrapped (because I had put a couple of jelly beans underneath the paper).

Nathan (preschool) also wanted to play, so I made a new mummy wrapping for him. This wrapping had a beginning sound on the left side and a word ending such as "at" or "ot" on the left side. Some of the words did not make sense when he smooshed the beginnings and ends together, but that's okay. He was just practicing sounding out words and laughed when we made a nonsense word.

Nathan also wanted to color in his mummy.

To play at your home or school, download the mummy template, print it on cardstock and cut it out. The kids can decorate their mummy if they like. Print out the wrappings template onto regular printer paper. I find the regular paper stays wrapped around the mummy a bit better than cardstock.

(And for some reason when you click the link, you may not be able to see the preview of both pages but both should be in the same document when you download it to your computer. I'm not a computer genius but I'm trying my best. Hopefully it will work for those who want to use it.)

click here for mummy outline and mummy wrapping 

You can cut around the outside of the mummy wrapping and then have the kids cut on the dotted lines to make the linen. (Fine motor skills practice! Yay!)  You can either write in the numbers/letters yourself or let the kids do it based on your instructions.

As a motivator (instead of sugar) you could cut out several mummies and write a joke on each one. Then once the child has answered the problems and unwrapped the mummy they could trade mummies for a new joke to uncover. Just a thought.

Other ways to use this idea:

 - have the kids apply the same operation to every number they open (ie. always multiply by 4, add 3, subtract 1 . . .)

- have the kids tell you what number they would have to add to "make 10" (i.e., if they open the number 7, they would tell you 3)

- as a matching game - write the same sight words on both sides of the page then have the child to find the matching words. If they find them they keep them open. If they don't make a match they wrap them back over the mummy. This could be a way to play this game with another person.

- matching number words to numbers, or color words to colors

I hope you find this idea useful for your Halloween School activities! Be sure to check out other ways we make learning fun around this time of year:

Halloween Book Activities

Candy Corn Math

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5 Little Hot Dogs

In honor of National Hot Dog Day, I give you one of our favorite chants.  You've probably heard of "5 little monkeys" and "5 green and speckled frogs", but have you ever heard of "5 little hot dogs"? I hadn't until my wonderful mother-in-law introduced us.  In addition to helping the kids learn to count backwards, it's just lots of fun.  The kids especially love yelling out the "BAM" at the end.

For your viewing pleasure:

(In case you can't see the video, or can't understand what they're saying)

5 little hot dogs, frying in a pan

The grease got hot and one went "Bam"!

4 little hot dogs, etc . . . 

3 little hot dogs, etc . . .

2 little hot dogs, etc . . . 

1 little hot dog, etc . . . 

(slower, with a sad voice)

No more hot dogs, frying in a pan.

(pause)

The grease got hot and the pan went "BAM"!!

9 innings of school

Last week, I was getting ready for an impromptu Cincinnati Reds party for our family for dinner (but that's another story).  I was also trying to get the kids to do their schoolwork, but they were not cooperating.  Since I had baseball on the brain, I thought to myself "maybe they'll do their work if I turn it into a baseball game somehow".

I quickly drew a scoreboard for each of the boys.  They were playing against me, not against each other. I filled up 9 of their work folders with schoolwork, and told them that each folder was like one baseball inning.

They could earn 3 runs per inning by doing their work without complaining, doing it neatly, and doing it quickly. However, I could also score runs each inning. Mommy would score when they complained, were sloppy, worked too slowly, or threw things (a too often occurrence in our schoolroom unfortunately).

I could not believe how well it worked.  The boys were excited and started right away. It was the easiest day of school we've had so far this year.  I got a couple of points for sloppy work, but other than that they "beat my head off" as Christopher likes to say.

The boys have asked that we play baseball every school day since then.  I need to look into making some more permanent scoreboards.  I'm sure it will lose it's magic at some point, but until then I shall enjoy the easy school days.  *contented sigh*

Math Pop!! (or making flashcards fun)

There are some things in life that are not much fun but must be done.  That's what I tell my kids.  One of those non-fun necessities in the life of a child is memorizing the multiplication table.  Yes, you can skip count, but future math problems will be so much easier if the answers to multiplication problems are readily available.  While I was dragging my son through his latest set of flashcards and wondering if we would ever get through them, I had a bit of inspiration on how to make them more fun.

I had seen an idea on Pinterest from giverslog.com where they had made a bubble wrap hopscotch gift to send in the mail.  I thought, "How fun! What kid doesn't like jumping on bubble wrap?"  This came to mind as I was puzzling over how to make our drill work more fun, and I thought "I should put the answers under bubble wrap and have him jump on the right one!"  It was a hit.

I cut squares of bubble wrap (I used the large bubbled kind because it makes a louder "pop") and wrote the answers to some of the multiplication problems we were practicing on pieces of paper.  I scattered the answers around the room and taped down a piece of bubble wrap on top of them.  After I explained the game to him, we practiced the flash cards one time so they would be fresh in his mind.  I called out multiplication problems, he called out the answer, found it on the floor, and jumped on it.  The next time through we used a timer to see how fast he could do it.  Then we did it again to see if he could beat his time - much more fun than sitting still and drilling.  He thought we should call the game "math pop", so we did.  We made up our own rules.  After he yelled out the answer, I was supposed to yell "pop it!" and he would go jump on it.  I was not supposed to say the next problem until I heard a good 'pop'.  Games you make up together are always more fun.

Joshua getting the playing field ready

With the toddler, I put colored pieces of construction paper under the bubble wrap and told him jump on the color I yelled out. He said "No mommy.  I stomp!"  Okay.  That works too.  After he stomped for a while, he decided it would be more fun to run and jump.  He did slip a few times when he started that, because the bubble wrap can slip even when taped down, but he would just stand up and laugh and say "I okay, mommy. I okay."  The older kids didn't have a problem though.  

For the 5 year old who is learning to read, I wrote letters on paper to put under the bubble wrap.  I would say something like "what letter does the word 'ball' start with?" and he would say "B!", find the letter, and pop it.  

This idea can be modified for so many different subjects.  What about writing out the continents, saying a country, and having the child jump on the continent where you would find that country? You could play this game to practice letter recognition, sight words, number recognition, math computation, states and capitals, musical terms, and any other thing your child needs to work on.

We had scattered the answers all around the room so there would be lots of moving (kids just need to move, don't they?), but you could also play with the answers all in a row or in a square to make it easier for the kids to find the answers at first.  When they were more familiar with the answers you could spread them out a bit more.

If you have more than one child working on the same things, you can always make it competitive and see who can pop the answer first.  Or you can split into teams and have one child from each team be racing to pop the answer first.  Just some thoughts.

My kids really enjoy playing this game during school time.  When we're done, we just stack the bubble wrap in a pile to use another day.

So, there you go.  Next time you have some flashcards to do with your child, think about adding a little fun to it.

Phew. That was a long post.  I need a nap. 

Back to School Party 2012 - Kid Style

Just so you know, this isn't a post about some cute over-the-top back to school party I threw for my kids.  It doesn't have any cute decorations or fancy treats.  Just so you know.

The day before school started, I was doing things around the house while the kids had a special secret meeting up in Joshua's room.  Occasionally Joshua would come down and ask me to write something for him, and then he'd disappear again.  Some time later, I received an invitation to a back to school party.  How exciting!

The party began with the guests sitting on the bed in Joshua's room as he and Maren explained how you played each game.  There were also prizes for each game, and at the end of the party, everyone would receive a back to school present from a collection of odds and ends the kids had rounded up in their rooms.  The presents were nicely displayed on a pillow.

fancy presents

The games included the "Angry Bird Toss" where we tried to knock down towers with an angry bird, "Tower Falls" where we tried to see who could build the tallest tower in a minute without it falling over, and "Penguin Pop" where we used a penguin ball shooter to try and get a ball in a container.  I thought it was quite cute and clever of them, but I didn't get many pictures since I was too busy playing the games.

Joshua playing penguin pop.  

After the party was over, and the presents were distributed, I offered to take the kids to get cupcakes and go to a fun indoor playground, since I was feeling bad that I hadn't planned any back to school party things.  Sadly, every other parent decided to take their kids to the same place for day before school fun.  But the kids still had fun, even though it was crowded.

Yay for cupcakes!

Back to School Countdown

I have homeschooled my little girl for the past 4 years and loved most minutes of it.  Last year we had her audition for a public magnet school that focuses on the creative and performing arts, thinking that if she got in we would consider sending her to public school.  Well, she got in for violin, and we decided to give this public school thing a try.  She started last week and, so far, she is enjoying it.  It helps that she gets to go to lots of arts classes and the people she is there with also love the arts, so she is happy.

To help get her excited about going away to school (and to give her some extra love and advice) I started a back to school countdown for her.  Each morning for the 10 days before school started I left a note and a present by her bed.  They weren't big presents, but they were meant to remind her of certain things which the notes explained.  A lot of them had to do with spiritual things, thing to help comfort her when she was in a new situation.  She was getting a bit anxious during the weeks before school started, so I was trying to help her out.

Here's a list of some of the things I gave her, along with why I gave them to her:

pencils - to remind her she's writing her own story

mood necklace/ring - to remind her that she can choose her mood

erasers - to remind her that it's okay to make mistakes

gum - to remind her to stick to her principles

lip balm and life savers - to remind her that prayer can be a lifesaver and be a balm to a worried soul

colored pencils/markers - to remind her that it's good appreciate all kinds of friends. Everyone is different and unique in their own way and together make things beautiful.

a box of "bottle caps" candy, which I changed to "thinking" caps - to remind her that she'll need to focus and work hard.  You could also use smarties.

For more back to school survival kit ideas, click here.

 So far, she's doing pretty well at school, although she does lament her lack of free time.  It's definitely been an adjustment and we'll reevaluate at the end of the year if we want her to continue at this school or come back home.

first day! We sure miss her at home. 

Sight Word Activity

I am helping my 5 1/2 year old to learn to read.  He's not too excited, and I've started and stopped several times with him this past year because I don't want reading to become a chore, but I finally decided to just force it on him.  I know that sounds mean, but he has a lazy, easy going personality and doesn't like to do anything that requires effort, so it's necessary.

We've been working on sight words.  Today we played a game with them that he thought was a lot of fun.  It's a version of the game "Don't Eat Pete", using words instead of pictures.

I printed out a chart of 9 sight words he's currently working on.

We put cheerios on each square.  He closed his eyes, and I pointed to the one that was going to be "Pete". (Maren was playing with us too) Then Christopher opened his eyes and began choosing cheerios to eat.  He had to read the word in the square before he could eat the cheerio he picked up.  If he picked up the cheerio designated as "Pete", we all yelled "Don't Eat Pete!" at him and he laughed, and then his turn was over. Maren also took turns, and at least Christopher was hearing the words even if he wasn't reading them himself.

We played this many times, and then for the last round I put chocolate chips on the squares.

goofball

Even though he puts up a fuss about doing reading lessons with me, I know he is enjoying his new skills. A couple of nights ago I found him reading a book in bed an hour after I had tucked him in.  I had to punish him, but was secretly rather pleased.

Book Activities from the Past

I thought I would post some links to previous activities we've done with books.  I love doing activities with books and the kids love it too.


Cam Jansen Book Club Activity

Scranimals and Mrs. Wishy Washy ideas













A Pizza the Size of the Sun Book Club Activity

How I Became a Pirate Book Club Activity

Making Books with Young Children

Halloween Math

Candy is a great motivator.  I love doing math activities with my kids the day after Halloween.  There is SO much candy.  Here are some that we did this morning:

We always practice our sorting skills

We made a Venn Diagram of favorite candies.  One side is Joshua's, the other is Maren's, and the middle is both of theirs.  It's sort of hard to do when one child thinks all the kinds of candy are his favorite.  We finally just asked him if there was any candy he sort of didn't like, and he decided Butterfingers were his least favorite, so Maren got to have at least one just in her circle.  

We weighed the candy.  The kids love playing with our scale. 

We practiced multiplication!  With some halloween candy, you know exactly how many are inside.  I asked Joshua "If there are 2 kit kat bars in each pack, and you have 6 packs, how many bars do you have?"  It didn't take him long to figure it out.  Maren also practiced with whoppers (3 per pack), and Hershey's mini bars (4 little rectangles per bar).  

She was excited to multiply and discover she had 36 whopper balls

Using Facebook (thanks friends!) I polled people to find out which was more popular: chocolate or fruity candies.  The kids made tally marks to show preference and graphed the results.  What a fun Math morning!

Glitter Sticker Alphabet Cards

I had looked into buying some montessori sandpaper alphabet cards as a tactile way to help teach Christopher to write the alphabet but didn't want to spend a lot of money on them.  When I was at Joann's the other day, I found a sheet of large glitter alphabet stickers on clearance for $1.50 and I thought they would make a good substitute.  I used blue cardstock for the consonants and red for the vowels. Christopher helped me put the stickers on.  Christopher likes tracing over them with his fingers and hopefully this will help him later write them with a pencil. They might not last as long as the store bought sandpaper ones, but they work for us.

Candy Corn Math - place values

This is a great elementary school math game to help kids understand and remember place value!

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Joshua's math workbook has been focusing on place value recently, which really isn't all that exciting to do on paper, so I thought I'd help make things a bit fun. We set up 3 pumpkins to represent ones, tens, and hundreds (the hundreds were the furthest away, and you can add more buckets for practice with higher numbers too).  Then I gave him 10 pieces of candy corn.  He stood on the mat and threw the candy corn into the buckets and then we wrote down how many he had in each bucket.  

The first time he got 2 hundreds, 1 ten and 1 one.  Then I had a turn tossing and he wrote down my score and we saw who had the larger number.  

We did this a few times and then decided to make it a bit trickier.  We each did 3 rounds in a row, and then he added up how hundreds, tens and ones he had combined and added up mine as well to see who the winner was.  

Whoever won got to eat the tossing candy corn.  And yeah, I let him win, because who really wants to eat candy corn that's been handled that much and on the ground that much.  Only kids.  Of course, Maren and Christopher had to also have a turn tossing the candy.  Christopher didn't really get the whole place value thing, but he did a good job counting how many were in each bucket, and that's about all you need for a preschooler.  For Maren I probably should have made each bucket be something like a x4 or x5 so she could practice her multiplication and then have her add all the numbers together, but I didn't.  Maybe next time.  

This works well for older kids too. All you have to do is add thousands, ten thousands, hundred thousands, millions, etc . . .

And while we're on the subject of candy corn, I just feel I should mention that the only kind of candy corn that is any good to eat is Brach's candy corn, and if you've never had it and you are basing your poor judgement of candy corn on inferior brands, you shouldn't.  That's all.

   

Making Books with Young Children

The other day my 6 year old was playing with his camera and came to show me the "action shots" he was getting of his playmobil people.  It was pretty cute.  He had set them up and taken pictures of them sword fighting, climbing a mountain, and fighting a dragon.  He told me who were the good guys and the bad guys.  It game me an idea.

The next day we sat down at the computer together and made up a story.  At this age, kids have so many stories in their heads but it's hard for them to write them out by hand.  I love typing up stories my little ones tell me. I have many saved on my computer and the kids like reading them.  Usually I would print them out and let the kids illustrate them by hand, but Joshua and I decided to use his camera this time instead.

After we had written the story, we got out his toys and set up the scenes for each page.  We had a lot of fun working together to make the pictures look just right.  He was in charge of the camera, and we talked about  how best to take the picture, whether it should be from a distance or a close-up.  Sometimes we had to take several to get it just right.  I tried not to be bothered by crooked ones. Then I put the pictures on my computer and added them to his story.  It took me a bit to figure out how to do the pages so that I could print on front and back and fold it and have them be in the right order, but finally got it figured out.  Joshua loves his book and wanted to print lots of copies to share.

There are so many things you can teach your kids while writing a story together.  While I typed up the story with Joshua we talked about the different parts of a story.  We talked about when to use quotation marks, synonyms for when a word was being used too much, capitalization, and ending punctuation.  When he didn't know what should happen next in the story, we would talk about possibilities and he would choose his favorite.  It was a great project to do together and he told me he is already planning a book 2.

This would also be great to do with beginning readers.  Children are more motivated to read a book they've created themselves.  Make a book with words your begining reader can already recognize and some they are working on.  They will love reading out loud to you a book they have created themselves.

Related to this idea, when my daughter was little she had 2 best friends move away.  To help them remember each other, my friends and I made up stories for them to be the stars of, took pictures of our daughters, and made a book for each of them.  My daughter still likes to look at hers and remember her friends, 6 years later.